HANCOCK

• • PCL-R – Usually completed by a trained professional during interview with the individual. Hare determined 30 to be a threshold after which the individual is deemed a psychopath. 
  • Clinical characteristics of a psychopath – manipulative, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, lack of remorse, lack of empathy, shallow emotions, parasitic lifestyle.
• • 3 language characteristics –
  • Unique socio-emotional needs (Basic physiological/material needs rather than higher level needs i.e. relationships —> ‘food, money, sex/, etc.)
  • Poverty of affect (Lack ability to directly experience emotions —> past tense verbs, e.g. stabbed; disfluencies e.g. erm, uh…)
  • Instrumental and world predatory view (Everything (and one) is theirs for the taking —> that, because, in order to get X, I had to do Y’).
• • Oxman (1988) – Statistical speech analysis was shown to be more accurate than a clinician’s diagnosis.
• • Porter (2009) – There is a popular notion that psychopaths are skilled conversationalists – indeed, Porter found that psychopathic offenders in the Canadian penal system were approx. 2.5x more likely than non-psychopaths to be successful in their parole applications, despite being far more likely to reoffend. 
• • Williamson (1993) – psychopathic language might actually be less cohesive and more incoherent than that of non-psychopaths. 
• Aim

  To compare the crime narratives of psychopaths compared with non-psychopathic murderers. Speech was analysed for instrumental worldview, unique socioemotional needs and poverty of affect. 
• Method

  • Self-report method – semi-structured face-to-face interviews (used Step-Wise Interview Technique)
  • Quasi-experiment 
  • IV – psychopath or not
  • DV – number of language characteristics used
  • Psychopathy was measured using Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare) 
• Sample

  • Androcentric, self-selected sample of murderers (14 psychopaths and 38 non-psychopaths) - no age difference.
  • All from Canadian correctional facility.
  • Mean age at time of homicide = 28.9 years; similar mean time since crime (11.87 P vs 9.82 Non-P). 
• Procedure

  • Psychopathy assessment:
  • (PCL-R) characterised by 20 criteria scored from 0 – 2 for a maximum score of 40. 
  • The clinical diagnostic cut-off for psychopathy is scores of 30 or above, however the researcher used 25.
  • The PCL–R assessments were either conducted by extensively trained prison psychologists or a researcher who was well trained in the coding of the PCL–R (inter-rater was high).
  • 14 offenders were classified as psychopathic and 38 as non-psychopathic. 
• Procedure

  • Audiotaped Interview:
  • Participants were then interviewed (25 mins). At the beginning of the interview, the purpose of the study (to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their homicide offence) and the procedure were verbally explained. 
  • While being audio-taped, participants were asked to describe their homicide offences in as much detail as possible (open-ended interview). 
  • Participants were prompted to provide to do this using a standardised procedure known as the Step-Wise Interview.
• • Audiotaped Interview:
  • The interviewers were two senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant, all of whom were blind to the psychopathy scores of the offenders. 
• • Post interview analysis:
  • The narratives were subsequently transcribed, as close to verbatim as possible. 
  • Two text analysis tools were then used to analyse the transcripts: 
  • Wmatrix - used to compare parts of speech and to analyse semantic concepts
  • DAL - used to examine the affective tone of the words.
• Results

  • Instrumental worldview:
  • Psychopaths used more subordinating conjunctions i.e. ‘so’ and ‘because’ than non-psychopaths. 1.54% controls vs 1.82% of psychopaths.
• Results

  • Socio-emotional needs:
  • Psychopaths used approx twice as many words related to psychological and safety needs, compared to the controls. 
  • The controls used significantly more words relating to social needs.
• Results

  • Poverty of affect:
  • Psychopaths used more past tense verbs and fewer present verbs than controls.
  • Psychopathic language was significantly less fluent that the controls’ language – 33% more disfluencies. 
• Conclusion 

  • Psychopaths are more likely than non-psychopaths to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murder 
  • Psychopaths focus more on physiological needs (money/food/sex) than higher level social needs when compared to non-psychopaths.
  • Psychopaths will linguistically frame their murders as more in the past and in more psychologically distant terms than non-psychopaths.
• Conclusion 

  • Psychopathic language is substantially more disfluent than that of non-psychopaths.
  • Psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level.
  • Psychopaths give less emotionally intense descriptions of their crimes and use less emotionally pleasant language than non-psychopaths.
• Method

  • Strengths:
  • More detailed information can be gathered from each participant because subsequent questions are specifically shaped to the participant - asked to elaborate on the crime they committed, etc.- therefore increasing validity 
  • Weaknesses:
  • Population validity reduced as only 14 psychopaths.
• Ethics

  • Guidelines broken:
  • Mild deception – told that the aim was to examine the way homicide offenders recall their homicide offence hence did not mention psychopathy.
  • It’s unclear if they knew were being assessed for psychopathy or compared against others
  • Informed consent not gained
  • Not debriefed regarding the purpose of the interview
  • Right to withdraw – prisoners so despite being given right to withdraw they might not feel that this offer is genuine. 
• Ethics

  • Guidelines adhered to:
  • Confidentiality/privacy – no personal details were included apart from age and gender. 
  • Degree of informed consent – Self-selected + they were given the aim with a small omission of psychopathy. They knew their language will be analysed.
  • Right to withdraw – given right to withdraw throughout 
• Ethnocentrism 

  • Is ethnocentric:
  • All from Canada – therefore it is quite possible that people in other countries would use language in different ways according to the nature of the language or the nature of the culture (e.g. the extent to which physiological needs are a preoccupation in a particular culture)
  • Canada has two official languages – English and French – we have no idea whether they were speaking both. 
• Internal validity

  • High:
  • Did not mention psychopathy  -> therefore they were less likely to change their behaviour. 
  • Data was kept confidential, which potentially reduced socially desirable answers. 
  • Double blind – reduced the likelihood of researcher bias
  • Step-Wise – used to ensure that interviewers are well trained and that they avoid leading questions.
  • Valid measured used – Wmatrix, DAL
• Internal validity

  • Low:
  • However, cut off point was 25, where normally it should be 30 – there is a chance they weren’t psychopaths at all.
  • Language use – education or culture could affect disfluencies
  • Data lack validity as psychopaths can lie
• Population validity

  • Weaknesses:
  • Only psychopaths, all Canadian, all male, all same crime - limited generalisability
  • All criminals – doesn’t represent psychopaths who are not criminals
  • All convicted of the same crime (murder)
  • Volunteers – might not represent other murders who didn’t volunteer
• Ecological validity

  • Strengths:
  • High in ecological val - talk about own murder
  • Weaknesses:
  • Potentially uncommon to discus murder long after incident
• Reliability

  • Strengths:
  • Inter-rater reliability was high - the PCL–R (trained prison psychologists or a researcher)
  • Interviews all followed the same ‘step-wise’ interview procedure
  • DAL, WMATRIX used to analyse language – ensured data from each participant approached in a consistent way
• Reliability

  • Weaknesses:
  • Interviews – narratives varied in, for example, which parts of the crime they described in most detail
  • 14 psychopaths not really large enough to establish a consistent effect
• Data

  • Strengths:
  • Although researchers collected data via interviews (which usually generate qualitative data), the way the descriptions were analysed, generated quantitative data 
  • Hancock could check whether differences in language use between psychopaths and non-ps were statistically significant.